Hey KM,
That doesn’t sound like it was a very comfortable conversation for you!
It makes sense regarding more people spending time gardening and maybe patching up fences and inadvertently blocking hogs’ access.
As for the food, I’m fairly new to feeding hedgehogs, but I’m a little dubious about hedgehog food as in a lot of cases it’s much the same as cat or dog food but with a higher price tag, and often a lower meat content. I totally understand why you chose to feed them hog pellets as you didn’t want to feed the local cats. I had looked at some hog food online but found it was difficult to find a detailed nutritional profile, I wanted to check the calcium/ phosphorus ratio.
From what you’ve said, it sounds like there’s a lot of grain in the hog food, but the same could be said of the cat or dog foods, unless you fork out for grain-free recipes. As for the diseased animal carcasses, there’s a lot of crap put in pet food as well, although I think I heard on QI that all pet food sold in the UK has to be fit for human consumption- I’m not sure if hedgehog food is regulated in the same way- maybe that’s what the shelter meant by licensed.
All I can suggest is that you look into it further and see what the experts on here advise. It’s certainly very concerning to be told such things about the food.
